Teens Mis-Use of Cell Phones for Concerned Parents

Openet comissioned an Harris Interactive study on teens and cell phone use. The findings around cyberbullying should be of concern to parents whos are trying to keep up with technolgy.

Many teens are lossing sleep because of cell phone use during times when their parents think they are sleeping. The average time teens spend on their cell phone is 2.2 hours on a typical school day (boys1.8/girles2.6). Teens are using their cell phone during school class time.  Besides mis-use of their cell phones teens are subjected to cyberbullying and negative activities.

Openet notes existing parental rules about safe mobile phone usage are largely ineffective because there is little or no enforcement. They contend that operators should provide more ways for parents to safe guard their teens.

 The more teens use their cell phones, the greater their risk of exposure to both experiencing and engaging in inappropriate or “mis-use” cell phone activity.

• Teens who are heavy cell phone users are more likely to be cell phone mis-users, cyberbullies and cyberbullied.
•  Heavy cell phone users are more likely than non/light users to admit they ever use their cell phones at night when they should be sleeping (94% vs. 70%) or in school, during classes (74% vs. 41%).
• 49% admited that they use their cell phones during  school classes.
•  The chances of being cyberbullied are greater with increased cell phone usage, with heavy cell phone users being more likely than non/light users to have experienced bullying behaviors from others (62% vs. 35%), both on their cell phones (46% vs. 23%) and online (47% vs. 27%).
• Four in ten (40%) teens have been exposed to some kind of negative or inappropriate activity from others on their cell phones and one-quarter (23%) indicate they are cell phone “mis-users”, having engaged in negative or inappropriate activities on their cell phones.

• A total of 41% of 13-17 year olds have experienced some kind of cyberbullying, either on their cell phones (28%) or online (31%), and one-quarter (25%) are cyberbullies themselves – bullying others on their cell phones (17%) or online (16%).
• Four in ten (42%) teens admit that in the past month, they have actively attempted to keep their parents from knowing what they do on their cell phones.
• Seven in ten (70%) 13-17 year olds indicate that their parents have rules about their cell phone usage but three in ten of these teens say their parents never ensure they follow the rules (8%) or only do so a little of the time (20%).
• Half (50%) of teens indicate that their parents attempt to monitor their cell phone behavior in various ways, including one in seven (14%) who say their parents use control software to do so.

General facts about teen cell phone use:

• Most 13-17 year olds have postpaid, family/multi-line mobile plans.
• 93% of teens use their cell phones for texting, including 74% who do so on a daily basis.
•  Teens send 60 texts on average in a typical school day. One-quarter (23%) send more than the average amount of texts per day (heavy use), and are also heavy cell phone users - spending more hours per day texting or talking on their cell phones and using their cell phones more frequently for a number of various activities.